How to Find the Best Short Term Rental Realtor in Broken Bow (And Every Other Vendor You Need)

Avery Carl [00:00:02]:
Hey guys, it’s your host Avery Carle with the Short Term Shop. And I’m really excited to dive into the Broken Bow market with you guys. We’ve got 10 episodes on everything you need to know about investing in short term rentals in Broken Bow. A couple notes that I want to give you guys before we get started. Any up to date purchase prices or income numbers on this market you can find on our website theshortermshop.com and if you’re ready to buy with us in any of the 20 markets that we work in, not just Broken Bow, if you want to work with one of our agents in any of those markets, you can email us at agents the shorttermshop.com be sure to follow us on YouTube and Instagram and Facebook at the Short Term Shop and of course join our Facebook group. It’s called Short Term Rental Long Term Wealth. It’s just me and 60,000 of my closest friends in there talking about short term rentals all day, every day. Again, if you need anything from us, you can email us@agentshorttermshop.com let’s dive into Broken Bow.

Avery Carl [00:01:11]:
Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of the Short Term show special episode series on Broken Bow. Today we’re going to talk about building your buying team. So before you start to buy a house, you’re going to need an agent, you’re going to need a lender, you’re going to need, you know, a few more people throughout the process. So we’re going to go through the process of finding those people and questions to ask and how to vet them. So got very familiar face. Kathy, say hello. Our short term shop agent in Broken Bow to help me go through this.

Cathy Craig [00:01:40]:
Hey everybody.

Avery Carl [00:01:41]:
All right, so there’s two places you can start with the people you need to go buy a house. One’s your lender and one is your agent. You don’t have to find either one first necessarily, but an agent is typically going to at least want you to have a pre approval with a lender before y’ all start really digging into things. So we’ll just, we’ll talk about the agent first. So if you find your agent first and you don’t have a lender yet, that’s totally fine. Just let them know like, hey, I don’t have a lender for this just yet, but if you have any you recommend, I’m happy to get pre approved with them. But so how do you find an agent that knows what they’re doing when it comes to short term rentals? So a lot of times now, nowadays in 2023, usually that’s on Facebook and usually you’re going to go find like a local Facebook group. That is, some of them will be short term rental specific.

Avery Carl [00:02:29]:
Some of them won’t be. Some of them will be just real estate investing in general. Sometimes there isn’t one. Sometimes you might have to go just to a short term rental Facebook group like our short term rental long term wealth and say, hey, has anybody bought in this market? Has anybody bought in Broken Boat? Do you have an agent recommendation? And you will typically get 5 to 10 to 20 people recommending agents. But you have to be careful about this because a lot of people have caught on to this, the Facebook group thing, and they’ll just have a bunch of their friends join these groups to recommend them when people ask for these things. So you always want to ask people when they make a recommendation, hey, have you bought a house with this person? And if they haven’t, then that’s probably not somebody you want to take the recommendation from. You really want to only be taking recommendations from people who have actually worked with that person. Because it’s really easy to say, oh, you know, she’s my cousin and I love her.

Avery Carl [00:03:20]:
Well, that’s great. But I need to find the best person, the most knowledgeable about what I’m trying to do, not the person who, you know, is related to you that you think is nice. I’m sure they are. But anyway, so when you’re taking recommendations from people, make sure that they’ve actually done deals with these people. And you want to ask a series of your own questions too. Like, I’m actually under contract in a market that we don’t own in. I mean, that we don’t operate in yet. And I have a recommendation from a client who was a client of ours that used the agent that we’re using.

Avery Carl [00:03:52]:
And so I just didn’t even follow my own advice and didn’t ask all these questions. And now that we’re halfway through a contract, I’m like, they don’t really know what they’re doing that much. So I’m mostly driving here anyway. I like to, I like to ask agents like, hey, how many, how many deals did you do last year? I think that it’s very important to have a busy agent. Kathy, what do you think about that? Like, do you think that, why would that be important that an agent that you’re hiring is busy as opposed to, you know, somebody who does one or two deals a year?

Cathy Craig [00:04:25]:
Well, I think the the busier you are, the more knowledge you gain and you know, you’re, you, you know the market more. If you’re just an agent that’s doing one deal a year in some place, you don’t know what’s happening. You don’t know what properties out there. You don’t know, you know, what’s happening in the world of negotiation at that moment. Because that does change, you know, depending on what’s happening with interest rates or buy downs or, you know, in, just in the general market. So you need somebody that’s been, you know, been doing a bunch of deals so that you have, they can give you a perspective on, okay look, you don’t want to go into a market and, and you want somebody that’s going to tell you, look, this is about the percentage I think we can get off of the property or you know, look, you’re going to have to offer full price or you’re going to have to do this, you’re going to do that. So you need somebody that’s doing enough deals that they know what’s going on.

Avery Carl [00:05:21]:
Yeah, I totally agree with that. And I think few years is a really good example of why you need someone who’s doing, you know, at least a deal a month. Because two years ago, if somebody had only done one or two deals in the past couple years, they wouldn’t know that at that point in the this market cycle you had to offer like a hundred thousand over asking just to be considered because there were a thousand people offering on everything. And conversely, now that the market has turned around, if they’ve only done one or two deals a year since 2022, they’re probably still going to be telling you to offer 100,000 over asking because the last deal they did was crazy like that. But that’s not what the market is anymore. You can offer X amount under asking and negotiate pretty heavily now. So you want somebody who, like Kathy said, knows what is going on in the market. And you only really can know that by doing it and doing it often and seeing what’s working, what’s not working.

Avery Carl [00:06:15]:
I also want to ask, so you know, if, if I get an agent who did 100 deals last year, that’s great, that’s a busy agent. I like that they are going know what. And 100 deals is like a wildly high number. Guys that’s just an arbitrary number that I just use. Don’t go looking for people who have done 100 a year because you’re probably not gonna find one. But if they did 100 deals last year, but 98 of them were primary homes. That’s probably not the agent that I want either because I want an agent who does a lot of short term rentals at the primary. Primarily their business is short term rental based because there’s a lot of stuff you have to know in a market about zoning and HOAs and who allows and doesn’t allow short term rentals.

Avery Carl [00:06:57]:
I actually, in a different market that I didn’t go under contract in, was looking for some properties with, with an agent and I said, hey, I was looking at a property in a resort and I said, hey, if I buy in this area, if I buy this in this building, it was a condo, am I allowed to self manage? And the agent said, well yeah, it’s your property, you can do whatever you want with it. And I went, thanks. Because that told me that this person doesn’t do a lot of short term rentals because you can’t just do whatever you want with a property that you own. There can be HOA restrictions, there can be deed restrictions, there can be county city restrictions. So you really want to make sure that they are somebody that does a lot of short term rentals because there can be just those things that you need to know. The last thing you want to do is offer on something and find out after you’ve closed that you can’t short term rent it. That is the worst nightmare of closing on a short term rental. So you want to make sure that the agent that you’re using does a fair number of deals a year and does them in the short term rental space.

Avery Carl [00:07:59]:
You just, just like, you wouldn’t come to me and say, hey, I want to buy a 20 unit apartment building in Pigeon Forge. Like I don’t do commercial. I am not the person who can best represent you at doing that because I have no experience in representing buyers in 20 unit apartment buildings. Same thing with short term rentals. Find the agent who does the a good number of deals of the asset class you’re trying to buy in, in the market that you’re trying to buy it. Actually that’s really important. You wouldn’t think I would have to mention making sure they’re in the market, but in the last two years we’ve seen people get licensed in like people that live in Michigan or California and try and sell properties across the country remotely just because they happen to own one there and kind of are familiar with the market. So they’re trying to sell from a completely, you know, hundreds of thousands of miles away.

Avery Carl [00:08:44]:
Not thousands. I think there’s only 3,000 miles across the United States, but you know what I mean. So make sure that this is an agent who, if you need something, can pop over and take a video of the property and can actually is local enough to be able to run around and.

Cathy Craig [00:09:00]:
Right.

Avery Carl [00:09:00]:
And view properties. So I should feel like I shouldn’t have to say that, but.

Cathy Craig [00:09:05]:
Well, I’ll give you an example of that. I mean, in local enough, you know, a lot of the Broken Bow agents are local, but not, you know, you know, you can live within an hour, two hours, three hours. It’s not, you know, you don’t have to live right there. But the. A good example of Oklahoma and just something very specific is in Oklahoma, there are two MLS systems. So you’ll get agents that are not familiar with Broken Bow from another part of the state or even Texas that will list on the Tulsa MLS and not the Oklahoma City mls. Well, the Oklahoma City MLS is the one where all of the Broken Bow listings are. So I happen to be a member of both, so I can see both.

Cathy Craig [00:09:52]:
But if, if you’re an agent that doesn’t know and you listed on the Tulsa mls, if you’re trying to set up a drip or something for somebody, they’re never going to see that. Nobody’s ever going to see that. So it’s just a. Just a quirky thing to know that if. But if you don’t know that, if you don’t know how things work in a glimmer, you don’t know how things work in this market, you could list something on an MLS system that it may or may not get to people. Right. So that’s just an example.

Avery Carl [00:10:24]:
Yeah. Make sure your agent is a member of the MLS that they need to be a member of. We recently lost a listing to somebody who then we saw it listed. It was a listing in Sevierville, Tennessee, listed in Chattanooga, which is over three hours away on the wrong mls. So the people who are working with agents in Sevierville, which is where the Smoky Mountains are, are not going to get that notification that that property hit the market because it’s on the wrong damn MLS by several hours away. So just keep that in mind. Make sure they’re a member of the right mls, make sure they live close enough that they can run, do things. I’ve get in trouble with getting go with buying properties with agents who are in an entirely separate state or nine hours away and didn’t have access to the right mls.

Avery Carl [00:11:13]:
And the worst one I’ve Seen actually is they bought a property that was the. The seller had bought a property that sat on two lots, but the actual house straddled the two lots. So you had to own both lots in order to, you know, have the house be what it needs to be. And that seller remodeled the house, flipped it, sold only one lot in the house to somebody else who later learned that the house straddled both lots, and this seller would not sell the second lot. I don’t know why they won’t sell the second lot. I think they’re developing it or something. Big lawsuit. But the agent that they bought with was not a member of the mls.

Avery Carl [00:11:51]:
But had they been, they could see, without even getting a survey that the previous listing, when they bought it, to flip it, when the seller bought it, to flip it specifically said the house straddles both lots. So if somebody had been a member of that MLS to actually be able to see that, then this client might not have or this buyer might not have had this issue. So I think that’s like the worst one that I’ve seen. But, I mean, you can go. I could go all day with real estate horror stories. But anyway, make sure that they live close enough to be able to, like, run around and video and all that stuff and look at things and that they’re a member of the right mls. Because there are things, guys that are on that only agents of the MLS can see. Like it’s called agent remarks or private notes or something that you can’t see on Zillow.

Avery Carl [00:12:36]:
And usually it’s something very important that they want to disclose, but they don’t want to put it to blast it out on Zillow. So they put it in the private remarks so only the agents can see it, and then they can let their clients know. So, anyway, just keep that in mind. One other thing, and this isn’t related to agents specifically. It’s related to agents, lenders, builders. Basically, any professional in any field is a few red flags when you’re hiring someone. So I. If any person that I’m going to hire to help me buy something is talking crap about their colleagues or lenders or other people, that’s not somebody that I’m going to hire.

Avery Carl [00:13:14]:
Because if they’re talking crap about other people to you and they don’t know you, they’re going to talk crap about you to other people. And all it’s going to take is, you know, one. One sideways thing, maybe one misunderstanding. And I don’t like that. I was recently interviewing builders, and there was One that built a house around the corner. For me, that’s exactly what I want. It’s like the exact house that I want. And they happen to be cheaper than everybody else, too.

Avery Carl [00:13:37]:
And we had them come over and check out our lot, and all they did was they talk crap about the engineer they worked with on that house. They talk crap about the owner of that house. I’m like, well, damn, they’re talking. I mean, this owner spent a lot of money with this builder. What are they going to say about me if I have one question on, hey, why does this invoice say this? But you charge me this? Like, all it takes is one sideways thing for people to have something to say. So I don’t like that. I also don’t like when agents use really aggressive terms to describe themselves. Like, hey, I’m a bulldog, I’m a fighter.

Avery Carl [00:14:08]:
Because that does not get you anywhere in negotiations. In fact, it makes the other side of the deal shut down. So in 2023, if somebody is not emotionally intelligent enough to know that you don’t get good deals for your clients by running around and breaking people’s knees, you get good deals for your clients by being an agent that other agen want to pick up the phone to. To answer the phone for. That’s not somebody I want either. And last but not least, like, social media matters. So I’m not talking about, like, posting horrible, like, mean, terrible things online. But we have, I’ve seen, we’ve had a seller who, when they listed with us, said, if we get an offer from this one certain agent, I’m not going to take it.

Avery Carl [00:14:52]:
Because this agent is always in the Facebook groups for the local real estate market talking crap about all the listings that she shows saying he. That they show saying, you know, this, this house was crap because of this. I’m doing so great for my buyers because this house was crap and that house was crap and they didn’t even want to let this person into their house that they wanted to show it. So that kind of stuff matters. People see that kind of thing and you just need to be. Be mindful of the way things come across. But anyway, yeah, again, I’m on a tangent. Feel like I’m talking to my kids.

Avery Carl [00:15:24]:
Let’s talk about lenders. So a lot of times you might need to get a lender recommendation from your agent. Maybe you’ve got a lender that you use all the time. That’s fine too. Ask them the same questions that you do. Agents. You want a lender who does the Type of deal that you’re buying in the market that you’re buying in often because that means they’re experienced. So Kathy, do you have any true log cabins in these markets? Because I think that’s the only like specific thing.

Cathy Craig [00:15:50]:
No, we don’t have any. I don’t say we don’t have any. There might be a couple, but nothing, nothing really that specific but. But it’s really important that you have a lender who has worked in this market, you know, multiple times. Because for instance, in Brokenbus specifically it’s going to sound really weird but nobody has a survey. Nobody. There’s like one guy and he’s about 90 that will do a survey, right? A stake survey. So it’s always a mortgage inspection survey and you’ll get a plat.

Cathy Craig [00:16:26]:
But if you get a lender that doesn’t know that, then you know there’s all kinds of weird stuff or we don’t do. Cos we don’t do certificate of occupancies. So we don’t. I had a California lender one time that just would not let it go. I mean would just wouldn’t let it go. We just don’t do it. So you know, you have to have somebody that knows the market. Same thing.

Cathy Craig [00:16:52]:
Appraisers. There’s only four, four or five appraisers in all of McCurtain County. Because in Oklahoma you have to apprentice to an appraiser for a year unpaid. So they have this kind of locked down thing. But if you get an out of state lender and they just go into the appraisal pool, which everybody has to do, not out of state but somebody who doesn’t know the market, then you’re going to get an appraiser from who knows where they’re going to come in and not understood. Understand the short term market and then you have a whole other set of problems. So it’s really important that your lender knows the area.

Avery Carl [00:17:30]:
Yeah, totally, totally agree with that. And it can go a long way too. If, when you’re making offers, if the listing side is familiar with the lender, you can, if the lender’s licensed in the state you’re trying to buy in the. You can use any lender that you want to. And this is really just more specific to if, if there’s multiple offers and things like that, listing agents like to. Oh, I know that lender, I’ve worked with them several times. It’s always super smooth, it always gets close because they want to see for their seller that we’re not going to have any hiccups that we’re going to make it to the closing table. So that can make a difference.

Avery Carl [00:18:04]:
Typically, if you’re going to, if you’re looking for commercial lending, so if you’re not getting a conventional investment loan or second home loan or a DSCR loan, those types of loans you’re going to have to get from a local bank and that’s kind of hard to do. So if you’re looking for true commercial financing and you’re trying to buy a cabin in Broken Bow and you live in Houston, Texas, you’re probably not going to be able to get the bank of Nebraska to give you a loan for that. You’ll probably have to get a local Broken Bow small bank or credit union because when it comes to commercial banks, it works differently than getting a conventional or DSCR loan. And there’s not like, not that I know of anyway, like a national commercial lending company, you’ll have to go local and they’re going to want to see your PFS personal financial statement that you’ve built, which is your entire financial picture. They’re going to want to see a business plan, they’re going to want to see that you’ve been successful doing this before. But most importantly, they’re going to want to see that you’re going to, that you want to build a relationship. So if you’re coming to buy a one off property in Broken Bow, you’re probably not going to be able to get a loan for that. But if you go to them and say, hey, I have these 10 rentals in another market, these 10 short term rentals in another market, I would like to buy 10 here.

Avery Carl [00:19:15]:
I want to build a relationship with you guys. Then they’re more apt to, to work with you because local banks want to build relationships. They’re going to want you to put money in their bank and they’re going to want to be able to drive by the asset. So anyway, if you’re looking for commercial lending, you will have to go hyperlocal for that. But anything else, you can technically use a mortgage broker or lender of some type of, from wherever. But any, any time you’re shopping, the more familiar with the more experienced in a market they are, the better off you are as a buyer with, you know, not having any hiccups and not making it to closing or having to, you know, have a fire drill at the 11th hour. Do you have anything else to add to lending, Kathy?

Cathy Craig [00:19:56]:
No, that pretty much covers it.

Avery Carl [00:19:58]:
All right, so next Home inspectors. So we talked a little bit about this or we’re going to talk about this on a later episode in depth. But where do you find home inspectors so you can. Again, all of the professionals we’ve talked about so far, biggerpockets forums or local real estate Facebook groups or, you know, big national short term rental groups will have these types of recommendations. But home inspectors, here’s what I don’t want you to do with home inspectors. So you want to obviously take your, your agent will have recommendations and you want to call those. But what you don’t want to do is say, oh yeah, Kathy, just schedule whoever you use. I don’t care.

Avery Carl [00:20:37]:
You always, always, always call the home inspector and have a conversation with them. Make sure you understand what is included in a home inspection, what’s normal, what’s not normal. Make sure you like this person and hire them yourself. Don’t just say schedule whoever. It is your job, it is your responsibility to hire your home inspector. I’ll tell on myself a little bit. So I did that one time when I was a new agent and I hired a home. I didn’t hire him, but my client said, I don’t care, just schedule whoever you normally use.

Avery Carl [00:21:08]:
Scheduled who I normally use. No problem. Get to closing. No problem. Had, you know, we had a few negotiations. A couple months later, client calls me screaming at me because the home inspector missed some squishy floors near one of the toilets and wanted to come after me. Because I scheduled the home inspector and you know, we were clearly conspiring against him on these squishy floors in this bathroom. Obviously I’m kidding.

Avery Carl [00:21:36]:
But that’s why you want to make sure that you know, you are in control of your own destiny and you’re hiring. Don’t. Just the same thing. Don’t have your agent call the county or the city. I’ve seen clients get mad about that before when we’re like, we’re not calling the city or the county for you to tell you exactly what they say. There’s too much that can get lost in translation. There can be misunderstandings. Anything to do with, with calling county or city for permitting, zoning, short term rental licenses, which you don’t really deal with here.

Avery Carl [00:22:03]:
You always, always call yourself, this is your investment and you want to make sure that you are the one in control and you’re not just taking anybody’s word for stuff.

Cathy Craig [00:22:14]:
Yeah.

Avery Carl [00:22:15]:
So any, any, anything on home inspectors, Kathy? I feel like I’m a very passionate.

Cathy Craig [00:22:19]:
No. I mean, yeah, no.

Avery Carl [00:22:21]:
All right. Insurance people kind of Same thing. We’ve got a great insurance broker on a later episode. So you’ll, you’ll meet him there. But again, recommendations, recommendations, recommendations from other investors, not from people’s cousins, from people’s friends, etc. Let’s.

Cathy Craig [00:22:38]:
Yeah. And you want to talk to, you know, whether it’s a lender or an inspector or an insurance person, no matter who I recommend, I always say talk to more than one person. You know, ask questions, make your own choices because you know, you, something may be more important to you than it is to me or you may, and you may, or you may not care at all. But you know, check prices, ask questions, you know what insurance and get a quote for an insurance company. Get the deck page which gives you everything that you’re being, you know, insured for. And then shop it around if you want to so that you know, you know, hey, I got the best deal or I chose not to pay for this and this is my risk factor, right? If you’re risk adverse then you’re gonna pay a little bit more for your insurance. If you choose to be a little riskier then you down the road are gonna have that, you know, that a bigger risk risk factor.

Avery Carl [00:23:43]:
There’s no such thing as being over insured. I don’t think you always would rather be over than under. Right. So I’m a big fan of like not cutting corners on, on insurance. Like you need to go through every single page of that policy and see what’s covered. Especially if you’re offering things that I’m trying to think of something that would be, that would be applicable to this market but I’m going to use something that’s not applicable. So like if you’ve got a property, maybe that’s on a lake with a dock and you let people use your little rowboat that you have to have a special insurance for off property activities and things like that. So proper is always a good place to start.

Avery Carl [00:24:22]:
Proper insurance. They are the most expensive but they are the most comprehensive when it comes to short term rental investing. But a lot of the local or not local necessarily, but more normal insurance companies now have short term rental add ons that cover a lot of these things. So you know, just shop it around, make sure you’re comfortable with the coverage and the price both before you make a decision. But that’s definitely not something you want to just take lightly because the last thing you want to do is find out the hard way that you didn’t have the right insurance.

Cathy Craig [00:24:49]:
I’ll give an example. There was a Cabin in Birkenbow. That not my cabin, not my client, but it was a beautiful five bedroom cabin and they had gotten some, what I feel like is bad advice. Not from the local insurance company we use a lot, but from somebody who really didn’t do short terms and they had a regular policy which is like a rent rider on it. And they burned the cabin down. They left the grill on overnight and it burned the cabin down. And I mean to the ground. All was left was the concrete, was the cinder block base.

Cathy Craig [00:25:32]:
And they were not covered. They were not covered because it was. There was something in the policy that excluded a certain time frame or it wasn’t for short term rentals or there was something in that policy because the goal of an insurance company is to cover you until they don’t have to. Right. And my husband was in insurance for 25 years. So I’m not speaking out of turn here. Insurance companies are great, but they’re only going to pay if you’re fully covered. Right.

Cathy Craig [00:26:01]:
They’re, they’re, they’re always looking for the loophole. That’s just how it is. So you want to make sure that, you know, even if it costs you a little bit more, that’s a lot cheaper in the long run than not being covered on a 7, 8, $900,000 cabin that you still are making payments on and you can’t afford to rebuild.

Avery Carl [00:26:25]:
Yeah, that is terrible. Can you, I mean, I guess you’re not, you’re not an attorney, but I was going to say, can you go after the guest for that? And I don’t know if you can or could or what?

Cathy Craig [00:26:33]:
I mean, I think, I think you, you know, I, I’m not an attorney. I just play one on television. I, you can absolutely go after somebody for that. But it’s, it’s like I was talking to somebody the other day about this and you can go after anybody for anything, but at the point where you get attorneys involved, you’ve already lost because you’re already, you know what I’m saying? You’re already going to pay so much money to get this fixed that. And you never know how it’s going to turn out because it’s a. Another human that’s going to decide whether you’re in the right or in the wrong. So I rather avoid that whole situation altogether and just, you know, talk to somebody who knows what they’re doing. And I’ll give you an example.

Cathy Craig [00:27:26]:
We have a commercial building and we rent it out to a guy who’s had part of the building. And because my husband had been in insurance, we got his insurance page, but we weren’t listed as additionally insured. So if somebody, you get a deck page and you’re renting a room out or a building out, a commercial building, you know, section out and you’re not listed as additionally insured. If something happens like if, if, if this person you’re renting to damages something, then you can’t go after that insurance. You’re not, you’re not covered. So talk to an insurance person that knows what they’re doing in that market and in that genre, whether it’s commercial or regular real estate or whatever it is.

Avery Carl [00:28:09]:
Yeah, 100%. All right, so you’ve got your insurance agent, you found your lenders, you found your real estate agent, home inspector. So let’s talk about the people that you will need to hire to run this thing. So there’s two main people you want to start with, your cleaner and your handy person. And I like to start with cleaners because you’ll find them, they’re, they’re your most important and then they’ll typically have handy person recommendations. But I think where a lot of people make mistakes is they want to start interviewing cleaners and things before they even get a house under contract or while they have a house under contract. And a lot of times cleaners are super busy and they can’t really give you a quote until they can come look at the property. So you can have two, two bedroom properties, but depending on are there a thousand bunk beds or what are the bathrooms like, they can be different prices to clean and you really need to wait until closing because if they don’t, they kind of know how this game works, that if they go over there before you’ve closed on it and then you don’t end up closing, then they’ve wasted their time by going out there to look at it.

Avery Carl [00:29:13]:
So you want to interview cleaners. Like once you get to the very end of your contract, may, it hasn’t quite closed, but you’re through all the contingencies. So we’re pretty sure it’s going to then start interviewing cleaners. And Kathy, what kind of questions do you ask cleaners when you interview them?

Cathy Craig [00:29:30]:
So what, what I ask and tell people to ask is what is included in your cleaning package? What do you do? You know, are you, you know, and I know it sounds stupid, but to what extent are you cleaning the bathroom? To what extent are you doing the floors? To what extent are you, are you really cleaning? Are you just going in really quick and just, you know, wiping stuff down and, you know, are you sanitizing? Are you, what are you doing? Do you charge to do laundry? Are you charging, you know, how much are you charging to do this stuff? You know, you know, are you, what are you including in your package? Do you include. You know, some people want you to buy their cleaners, some people don’t know. The specific thing about Broken Bow is, is because we are growing so much and, but still small town, most everybody knows everybody. So, you know, when you have an agent that knows everybody, then that agent can recommend a good person to you and who they know is reliable. And then you can talk to that person, talk to a bunch of cleaners. But it’s, it’s very often that the property that you’re buying, you may be talking to the cleaner that already cleans it. So, you know, I definitely suggest people wait till after we get through inspections because it’s just a waste of everybody’s time to talk before that. But once you’re talking to them, just ask them, what do they do? What do they include? Do they.

Cathy Craig [00:30:56]:
Will they put out the coffee pods? What all will they do and what do they include? And most of them have a list of all the things they do and what they include and what kind of cleansers they use and, and all these things. So get as many details as possible so that you don’t have to go back later and say, hey, wait a second, you didn’t do this or that and I wanted you to do this or that.

Avery Carl [00:31:17]:
Yeah, it’s really important to set the expectations up front. And let me just be really clear about this. Even though you’re the owner, you are not in charge. The cleaners typically, when they, you know, when they’ve been cleaning in an area for a while, they have a set, not like they have a set checklist of things that they do. So don’t think you’re going to come in and revolutionize cleaning in a market because they all typically will have a very similar set of things that they do. And sometimes, you know, they will be open to like, you know, a lot of people have started using Breezeway recently where, you know, they want to have pictures of things that are timestamps. That’s actually also for the cleaners protection. And it’s not just like, hey, I just want to check your work, so take pictures of everything for me.

Avery Carl [00:31:59]:
It protects the cleaner and us as hosts from guests who might be lying about things not being clean and asking for a discount. So that Protects all of us. So I’m not talking about, you know, you can’t ask him to do anything like that. But if you think, you know, you’ve created this, if you’re an engineer, sorry, engineers, but it’s always you guys. If you’re an engineer and you’ve created this 347 point checklist that you want them to do, they’re going to say no. So you have to work with the processes that they already have. Most of them, you know, are going to be flexible and willing to do, you know, new things, but you can’t just come in and try to change the entire industry. So just understand that and treat your cleaners like gold.

Avery Carl [00:32:42]:
Ask them questions about, hey, do you supply? Because some of them will just charge a little extra and they’ll take care of all the, the toilet paper, paper towels, laundry pods, things like that. Some of them will have options where maybe they won’t include that and they’ll just let you know and you can Amazon them things. So ask them about those things and just see what their process is. Ask them what color sheets they want you to use, what color towels they want you to have, how many of each. Because you know, they’re kind of in charge. They’re like your mini property manager. But what’s most important is to find one that your communication style matches. So our very first cleaner, she KNEW I was 25, 6 years old, and she’d been doing this for 25 years.

Avery Carl [00:33:21]:
And she ran all over me because I did not, I. She knew, she knew she had the upper hand on me. From the very first check in. She called me and said, I can’t believe you would let these people stay in your house. They were completely disrespectful. They’ve made such a mess. And of course I, being new, went, oh my gosh, I’m so sorry, I can’t believe, what do I do? How do I make sure I don’t let these horrible people into our house anymore? And she’s like, well, you know, I’m going to need 30, 50 extra bucks to clean this today. And it became a pattern because I didn’t know that it’s not normal for the first person to check in to completely trash a house.

Avery Carl [00:33:56]:
I thought, man, this is my first rental. What did I do wrong here? I’ve let people trash my house. But then she kept telling me every week somebody trashed the house, I need more money, I need more money. And eventually one day I went over and looked after check in before she came in and the house was spotless. And what did she do? She called me and told me they’d completely trashed it and she needed more money. So I eventually had to fire her. But that was my fault for not like being assertive from the beginning. So you’ve got to find somebody who works with your communication style from the get go because you’re probably going to end up.

Avery Carl [00:34:33]:
What’s more important actually than the job that they do is how you guys are able to communicate, to tweak the things about the job that they do to be what you need it to be.

Cathy Craig [00:34:44]:
Yeah, I mean that’s super true. So your cleaners are gold. I mean they, you know, when you find a good one, you, you keep them as long as you can because they are going to save you. Especially if you are an out of state owner and you have people cleaning for you. They are going to be the ones, especially in Broken Bow, they take you on to raise and so they take it very personally. They are the ones that will do whatever you need whenever you need it, but you need to treat them as such. And if you’ve called somebody to do something that’s not with, you know, that’s extra, you know, Venmo, a little money or you know, don’t, don’t just say, oh, they did that and think that they don’t need it. Because if you treat them the way you want to be treated, they’ll do anything you want them to do and be happy to do it.

Cathy Craig [00:35:37]:
And it’s, it’s super important that they, you know, I, I had something the other. Oh, I. One of my lake houses, I had six elderly people, I mean over 80. They could not run the remote on the TV. They just could not figure it out no matter what I did or what I said. I called my girl and I said, do you mind? And she went over there and explained it to them and I shot her some money because she saved me. She saved this day. I got a great review and it was worth a little bit of money I sent her for her time.

Cathy Craig [00:36:15]:
So you know, do the right thing. Be that, be that owner that people.

Avery Carl [00:36:21]:
Want to work for 1000% be the person that they want to work for. Invest in your cleaners and that will come back to you a thousand fold. And all right, next, handyman maintenance people. So with cleaners you want one cleaner slash company you don’t want to get. I see people all the time ask, well should I get a backup cleaner? Should I alternate cleaners and use two cleaners? For a property in case somebody’s ever sick. And like, no, that’s a huge headache. Nobody wants to do that. You don’t want to do that.

Avery Carl [00:36:53]:
You might think you want to do that right now, but you don’t. When it comes to maintenance people, it’s the opposite. Get as many maintenance numbers as you can. Call your favorite one when something goes sideways that you need to get fixed. But if they can’t get to it, then go down the list. So it’s kind of the opposite there. You want to build a database of maintenance people so that when something goes wrong, you have more than one person to call. And if they can’t get to it, you’re not stuck.

Cathy Craig [00:37:19]:
Oh, 100%. You need as many as possible. And you’re going to have your cleaner recommend people. You’ll see the Facebook pages recommend people. But again, same thing, you know, treat them the way that you want to be treated. One of my properties in Broken Bow happens to be an RV. Crazy as it sounds, that thing is booked 99% of the time. I rarely have a night that’s not booked in that thing.

Cathy Craig [00:37:46]:
It does great. It’s in a little bitty RV park. There’s trees and lights and it’s, you know, really cute. And I have a guy who will do anything for me. And the other night I needed something at 8 o’ clock at night and he went over there and he was thrilled to do it because he knew that he was going to make a little bit of extra money. He didn’t tell me how much it was. I just threw some at him. And he always says, oh, you pay me too much.

Cathy Craig [00:38:13]:
But you know what? Saved me an hour on the phone trying to explain to somebody something that was pretty easy, right? Because sometimes it’s just you need somebody to show you. Right. It’s. It’s not a matter of anything else. It’s just sometimes it’s just easier. He went over there, took care of it. It took him five minutes, I think a total of 20 minutes. Because he lives very close, done, over with.

Cathy Craig [00:38:35]:
So, you know, if I called him right now and needed something, if he had the ability to do it, he would do it it. And it’s really important that you just. You don’t ever want to abuse those kinds of people in your life because they are your. They’re your lifeline.

Avery Carl [00:38:52]:
They really are. And I think it’s also important to note that unless it’s like a big maintenance company, if it’s like an independent handyman type guy, they’re that’s kind of like a transient industry. So you probably aren’t gonna. If it’s just one person and not a big company, you’re probably not gonna have them for 10 years. It’s probably something. They’re between other things. So just know that going in, that you’re gonna. There’s a lot of turnover in that industry, so just keep it in mind.

Avery Carl [00:39:20]:
But again, same thing with the cleaners. You’ve got to treat your handy people, your maintenance people, like gold because you could not function without them.

Cathy Craig [00:39:28]:
In Broken, in Broken by specifically, there are no big maintenance companies. So this is somebody’s career. So they are a career handyman. They’re a career. You know, they sell firewood for a living. They’re a career, whatever it is. And so you don’t want to treat them as if they’re some neighbor that you just asked to go over and check your mail. Do you know what I mean? You.

Cathy Craig [00:39:56]:
Yeah, this is. This is their career, and you have to be respectful of it and their time. And if you’re that way, they’re going to respect you. I see a lot of. I see a lot of people that don’t do that. And. And again, back to knowing your local agent, when you’re talking about your team, you know, your team includes even people that you have to call to get things done. And.

Cathy Craig [00:40:21]:
And we’re going to talk about this in a later episode, but in Broken Bow, we only have one Internet company right now. Well, if you call that Internet company and I tell everybody the same thing, be nice when you call, be sweet when you call, Tell them you need help. Help me along. Don’t call and demand that things happen for you. You’re not reinventing the wheel here. I literally had a client that listened to me, called and had their Internet within a week. Had another client who did not listen. Took her three and a half months.

Cathy Craig [00:40:53]:
And that is no joke because of the way when she called them. You know, this is a small town. They have the ability to put you at the end of the line. Line. So just remember, oh, gosh, if you don’t want to be at the end of the line, you know, be nice.

Avery Carl [00:41:07]:
Yeah. You got to remember, too, that a lot of these places are very small towns. At the end of the day, when all the tourists leave, kind of. I mean, like, when I call places back home, they’re like, oh, are you. Are you Dr. Allen’s daughter? I’m like, yeah, I have a different name and I have not lived here for 20 years. But yes, somehow you still know who I am. And it’s just, it’s just like that.

Avery Carl [00:41:32]:
And especially people will remember if you’re mean to them. Like, because Luke, my husband, got, was like furious the other day because some guy came up to him in a parking lot to tell him, you can’t park there. And he was not actually trying to park, he was just doing something like rebuckling the kids into their car seats or something. And he was like, I know. And then the guy just kept on, was like, no, I’m serious, you can’t park there. And Luke was like, I’m clearly not parking right here. But he was obsessed with that guy for like a week afterwards. So don’t be that person that the person at the cable company or the power company or whoever remembers for being a jerk.

Avery Carl [00:42:09]:
So they, oh, oh, I lost your application. Sorry. People remember that.

Cathy Craig [00:42:14]:
Yeah. And, and I am not saying, please. I’m not saying that I have never been a jerk or that it’s not going to happen again. It might. I’m not, I’m not sitting here saying that. I’m not. Because I certainly, you know, if you come at me, I may come right back, but I’ll try really hard not to. I’m not going to start it.

Cathy Craig [00:42:35]:
You start it and, you know, you may get a little bit back, but I’m going to try not to, to be the person that starts, you know, starts it all up.

Avery Carl [00:42:46]:
Bottom line, you get more bees with honey in everywhere. No matter what you’re doing. Short term rentals, doctor’s office, anywhere. Okay. So I think that that’s, that’s everybody that you will probably need to get through your contract and then, you know, manage your property. Kathy, anybody else besides cleaners, handy people. Oh, who do, who does the hot tubs here? Is that part of the. Because I think everybody has a hot tub.

Avery Carl [00:43:13]:
Is that part of the cleaners gig? Is that a maintenance.

Cathy Craig [00:43:15]:
Cleaners do it? The cleaners? Yeah. Empty it every time and clean it. So, yeah, that, that’s, they do that. I think the other, you know, you. We do a lot of propane, so you get to know your propane guy pretty good. So you know the propane people, the people that fix the hot tub, stuff like that, sometimes that’s not the handyman, that’s a separate company. But everybody kind of knows everybody. But yeah, for sure, you know, propane is going to be, you’re gonna, you’re gonna talk to that guy, he’s gonna come fill it and do that kind of thing.

Cathy Craig [00:43:49]:
So yeah, I’d be the only other person.

Avery Carl [00:43:51]:
All right, awesome. Well guys, if you’re interested in going ahead and pulling that trigger and buying something with Kathy in Broken Bow, you can email us at agents at the short term shop.com and we will get you connected. Or if you just kind of want to learn more, hang around, lurk, see what other people are talking about. When it comes to short term rentals, you can do that in our Facebook group. It’s same title as my book behind me, Short Term Rental, Long Term Wealth. Or if you have specific questions, we do have a live Q and A every Thursday. I almost forgot what day it was every Thursday. And you can sign up for that@structions.com thanks guys.